


The Incident with Mrs Peterson

by MaryPSue



Series: Return, Rewind, Rewrite [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle just wanted to go to a party. She hadn't asked to be kidnapped and used as a hostage by someone who wanted to bind her brother and steal his freaky demon powers. If this was karma's way of punishing her for sneaking out, then karma was a <i>jerk</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Incident with Mrs Peterson

**Author's Note:**

> This is a followup of sorts to [Return, Rewind, Rewrite](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2781551/chapters/6240008), and won’t make much sense if you haven’t read it. [I was asked if Belle would ever take on the role of ‘Mizar’](http://marypsue.tumblr.com/post/106739529523/do-you-think-that-eventually-belle-from-return), and the answer happened to line up with an idea that I wanted to write about, so here it is!
> 
> This fic is part of the [Transcendence AU](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com).

“Absolutely not.”

Belle made a noise that she hoped accurately conveyed her frustration, disappointment, and absolute heartbreak at this unprecedented parental betrayal.

Her father didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.

“Are you _kidding_? This is _only_ the biggest event of the year! It’s the first time that Onika has _ever_ invited me to _anything_ , and this isn’t just any party, it’s her sixteenth birthday bash, and _everybody’s_ going to be there, and if I don’t show up because my _dad_ won’t let me go then the _entire grade_ will laugh at me and no one will _ever_ invite me to _anything ever again_ and I’ll have to become a hermit and go live in the forest and make friends with squirrels and then the gnomes will kidnap me and make me their queen and you’ll never hear from me again and it will be _all your fault because you didn’t let me go to Onika’s party!_ ”

She stopped, taking several deep breaths, noticing that her father did not look moved by the tragic scenario she’d presented. If anything, he looked like he was struggling not to laugh.

“Your brother doesn’t seem to be worried about having to become a hermit if he doesn’t go,” he pointed out, reasonably, sounding remarkably collected, but the way his lips kept trying to twitch upward into a smile gave him away.

“He’s _already_ practically a hermit. Dipper _never_ goes to parties, Dad, you know that.”

“Leave me out of this,” Dipper said, from the couch.

Belle frowned, and crossed her arms. “Fine. I’ll just have to tell everybody at school tomorrow that I can’t go because my father doesn’t _love_ me enough to save me from total social isolation.”

Her father let out a sigh, tossing the newspaper in his lap onto the table beside the armchair. “Faybelle Carina Sterling, I have said no.”

“ _Daaaaad_ , you _know_ I hate it when you call me _Faybelle!_ ”

“Don’t change the subject. You are not going to that party, and that is final.”

Belle met her father’s cool, determined gaze with an equally determined one of her own. “Oh yeah? Well…well…just try and stop me!”

Her father didn’t so much as blink. “Dipper?”

Belle’s brother, sitting on the couch with his back resting against the armrest and his nose in a mystery novel, leaned his head backwards over the armrest to look over at Belle and their father. “Yeah?”

“Control of the remote for two weeks in exchange for not helping your sister sneak out this weekend.”

“What?” Belle complained. “That’s not fair!”

Her brother turned his gaze to the ceiling thoughtfully. “Hmm. Control of the remote _and_ the Webfilms account,” he said, after a moment’s deliberation, and their father sighed, half-turning in his chair to face Dipper.

“All right.”

“Dipper, don’t you dare -” Belle started, as her brother’s face split into a lazy grin and he flipped over on the couch to lean his chest against the armrest, holding out a hand to their father, his eyes flickering dark and golden.

“Deal.”

Belle’s father reached out and took Dipper’s hand, giving it a brief shake. There was a quick flare of blue fire, and Dipper turned back over and stuck his nose back in his book like nothing had happened as Belle gave a wail of anguish. “Traitor!”

“Sorry, Belle,” Dipper said, without looking up from his book. “Two weeks without Pony Magic Academy was too good to pass up.” He turned a page, and gave a little fistpump. “Yes! It _was_ the jealous grandson! Hah, you’re going to have to write better red herrings than _that_!”

Belle looked from her brother to her father, and, finding no signs of sympathy from either of them, turned and stormed out of the living room.

…

It wasn’t fair. Belle was nearly sixteen, she was practically an adult, she wasn’t _stupid_. You had to be alert and cautious to work with any animals, but especially magical ones, and _especially_ magical ones that had been abused or neglected, and she’d been volunteering at the supernatural shelter in town since she was thirteen! Not to mention that she had an actual literal _demon_ for a brother and a griffin (admittedly, a teacup griffin) for a pet. She’d been taking spellwork classes as an option since eighth grade (although she _was_ only really any good at spells for illusion or appearance, which she’d mostly ended up using to make everything she owned sparkle, and while she _had_ invented a few glitter spells of her own, they had an unfortunate tendency to explode). For pete’s sake, she did her own _laundry_! She was _responsible_ , and she was _capable_ , and no matter what Dipper said about that time with the weedwhacker and the Wen-Day-Glo (like a wendigo, but _infinitely_ more stylish), she could take care of _herself_.

And she was _going_ to this stupid party, even if she wasn’t actually _friends_ with Onika (after all, this _was_ the first time Onika had ever invited her to anything, and Belle had a sneaking suspicion that Onika had invited everyone in the entire tenth grade), even if, had her father been a little less stubborn, Belle probably wouldn’t have been as interested in going to the party at all.

And she probably wouldn’t be hanging out of her bedroom window by a rope of knotted bedsheets, hoping the strengthening charms she’d cast on it would hold.

She braced both feet against the side of the house, reaching in the window to grab her bag from the desk in front of it, and froze as her brother walked past the door. He stopped and stared at her, and Belle stared back, her hand still outstretched for her bag.

“Aren’t you going to yell, or I dunno, levitate me back inside or something?” Belle asked, finally, when the silent staring got too uncomfortable.

Dipper shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “I just said I wouldn’t _help_ you sneak out. I never said I’d _stop_ you.”

Belle gave him a wide grin, leaning forward another inch to grab her bag, and was about to slip down the makeshift rope again when Dipper said, “Hey.”

“What?”

“I never said anything about not helping you sneak back _in_ , either.” He smiled, looking goofily proud of himself. “Seriously, though, if anything happens, if you need help, call me, okay? I’ll be here, I’m forcing Dad to watch the old Fight Fighters movie with me, it’s hilariously bad, but I’ll come get you if you need, no questions asked.”

“Okay, maybe you’re not such a traitor after all,” Belle said, with a small smile. “But wow, you can be such a _dad_.”

She slipped away down the rope before Dipper could stop sputtering.

…

Belle was not having fun.

She’d been right – Onika had invited the entire tenth grade, and while it made for a kickin’ party, it also meant that it was nearly impossible for Belle to find the people she knew really well. She’d seen Mindy and Alistair across the room once, but they’d been part of a conga line and she’d only been able to wave before they’d been swept out of the room. And yeah, Onika’s family’s mansion was pretty cool, especially the swimming pool that had antigravity generators instead of water so you just floated in air, and the sound system that read brainwaves and projected your favourite songs directly into your neural pathways so that everyone was always hearing a song they liked, but you couldn’t cannonball into antigravity and soak everyone around the pool, and it was impossible to dance without running into someone when you were all hearing different beats, and Belle had heard &andra’s “Your Love Is My Illegal Pharmaceutical” three times in the past hour and _hadn’t been able to sing along_ because everyone else was hearing something else and wasn’t happy about her interrupting it. And someone had _definitely_ spiked the punch, and honestly, that had stopped being fun around the time the first person had thrown up. So here she was, risking eternal grounding to stand alone in a corner with a drink she didn’t want, listening to music she couldn’t sing or dance to.

She’d never thought she’d hear herself say it, but Belle Sterling was officially burnt out on a party.

“Hey, it’s Bella, right? Bella Sterling?”

Belle turned around to face her hostess, her smile feeling a little less bright and sunshiney than usual. “Just Belle, actually.” She gestured vaguely around with the hand that still held a plastic cup of punch she’d taken one sip of and then hadn’t known how to politely get rid of. “Thanks for inviting me. This is a pretty great place you’ve got.”

Onika shrugged modestly, then grinned, her teeth almost as blinding in the UV light as the purple and teal streaks in her bangs. “Ah, thanks! It’s kind of nice for parties, but it’s pretty boring with just my parents and me around. Speaking of family, your brother couldn’t make it?”

“Huh? Oh no, he’s not big into parties.” Belle laughed, looking around for a flat place to put her drink down and conveniently forget it was hers. “He’s probably -” She checked her vintage hot pink jelly watch, and boggled at the time. “It’s _how_ late? I’m gonna guess he’s asleep right now.”

Onika laughed too, glancing over her shoulder and giving a little wave to someone waving from across the room. “Yeah, time flies when you’re having fun. And really? That’s too bad, I was hoping he’d show. Oh well. It’s good to see you though!”

“You know he’s not really into dating, either,” Belle said, and watched Onika’s face fall, confirming her hunch. Wow, she should be a detective. “Like, anybody. At all.”

Onika recovered quickly, throwing on a smile that only looked a little disappointed. “Oh well, too bad. It _is_ nice to see you, though. I know we don’t talk much, but seeing your outfits every day always makes me smile.”

“Wait. Me?”

“ _Yes_ you, silly! Who else is this brave?” Onika gestured towards Belle’s neon-paint-spattered leggings, giant hot pink hair bow, oversized sweatshirt featuring a print of kittens playing synthesizers in space, and rainbow canvas sneakers. “I can’t think of a single other girl who could wear that outfit and carry it off. And you’re always so colourful!”

Belle tried to think of something smart to say in response, but all she could do was blush - and babble. “It’s not _brave,_ I just like to wear things that make me happy. And you look _amazing_ in bright colours, they really pop against your skin tone -”

“Belle?”

A hand landed on Belle’s shoulder at the same time as her brother’s voice said her name. Belle jumped, spinning around to see Dipper standing just behind her and to her right, frowning worriedly around at the other party guests. “What’s up, Dippin’ Dots?”

“Oh hey, you made it!” Onika said, recovering herself remarkably quickly. “Heck of an entrance there. I thought teleportation was a college-level spell?”

“It is,” Dipper said shortly. “Belle, have you heard from Dad at all tonight?”

“If I had, do you think I’d still be here?” Something was wrong. Her brother’s voice had picked up a faint echo, and the air immediately around him was cold and seemed to warp, just slightly. “What’s going on?”

“Mrs Peterson from work called in the middle of the movie. Something about a break-in at the library. He went to go check it out around nine and he hasn’t been back since.”

Belle worried her lower lip as she considered. “He might still be there, or if anything got stolen, he might be at the police station -”

“I checked. There’s no sign of a break-in at the library, Belle. And he’s not answering his phone -”

“Have you tried scrying for him?” Onika asked, drawing both the twins’ attention. “I mean, I know the spell’s a little advanced, but if you can already teleport -”

“I have. There’s _nothing_. It’s like something’s blocking my sight.” Dipper’s voice rose with what Belle recognized as barely-contained panic. “That’s only ever happened to me _once_ , and it was _not_ a coincidence.” He looked around, seemingly realizing where he was for the first time. “Sorry about barging in like this, but I had to make sure you were safe before I did anything else. Whoever’s behind this must not have counted on you sneaking out tonight – either that, or they knew they wouldn’t be able to hide _you_ from me and went after an easier target.” The last few words came out as almost a growl.

“Wait, wait, are you saying your dad was, like, _kidnapped_ or something?” Onika looked from Dipper to Belle, arching one perfectly-plucked eyebrow. “Is he like…a spy, or a demonologist, or what?”

“Special collections librarian at the university, actually,” Belle answered. “Dip, do you want us to head home and -”

Dipper’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm just above the elbow, stopping her short midsentence. He didn’t look at her, staring intently into the middle distance instead. Belle thought she saw his eyes flicker, and glanced over to see if Onika had noticed anything. Onika had a frown of concern on her face, but she didn’t look _frightened_ , so probably not.

“What?” Belle asked her brother, scanning the crowd in the direction he was staring. Dipper shook his head slightly, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into her arm until she yelped. “Ow!”

“Not – here, it’s -” His eyes snapped open, sclera gone black and irises glowing furious golden. Onika gasped sharply and reached out to grab Belle’s other arm, trying to pull her away.

“Hey, it’s okay, cut it out,” Belle tried to tell her, but Onika shook her head, eyes wide.

“Belle, _please_ , I think your brother’s -”

Whatever Onika thought Belle’s brother was, though, Belle didn’t get to find out. There was a sudden wrenching sensation, a little like when Dipper blipped her places but clumsier, less focused and more forceful, and the party flickered out around them. The world turned to a howling void for a split second before it was replaced by the dim light of candles and the eerie blue glow of a computer screen, illuminating floor upon floor of walls lined with books, galleries rising up into the dark.

“- possessed,” Onika finished, then looked around, edging a little closer to Belle as she took in their surroundings. “Uh. Where are we? What just happened?”

“This is the university library,” Belle whispered. “What -”

A deep, pained groan from Dipper cut her off, and Belle turned just in time to see her brother sink to his knees, the air around him shimmering like a heatwave, his death grip on her arm going slack.

“What’s happening?” Onika whispered, clinging tightly to Belle’s other arm.

“I don’t _know_ , okay?”

“Belle. _Belle_. We’re standing in the middle of a summoning circle!”

"I _know_ that. Didn’t you notice we just got summoned? But something’s wrong!” Belle leaned over, giving Dipper’s shoulder a shake. “Dip? You still with us? Come on, bro-bro, what’s going on?”

The only answer she got was a growl, one that barely sounded human. Onika squeaked, trying again to pull Belle away, and Belle yanked her arm free to kneel beside her brother. The weird shimmer in the air around him had started to grow darker, and she knew it was only a matter of time before her brother went all-out demon. Honestly, she was a little surprised he’d managed to hang onto human form through that summoning. Still, he wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Run and see if you can get some help, okay?” Belle said, locking eyes with Onika. Onika looked about ready to pass out, but she nodded, without argument.

She’d just turned away when Dipper tensed up, looking for all the world like a startled cat, and shouted, “Both of you, get out of the circle ń̴̛͢o̡̨̢͠w̢̢͘͞!”

Belle didn’t hesitate. She jumped to her feet and sprinted for the ring of candles encircling them, with Onika not far behind. They both made it out just before a feminine voice, oddly grating and vaguely familiar, said a single harsh word in Latin from somewhere in the dark behind them, and the lines of the circle glowed a brilliant azure, rising like ropes from the floor to lash around Dipper and tie him down.

Belle wasn’t worried. There wasn’t a circle on Earth that could hold her brother, not when he didn’t want it to. He’d be fine, but she and Onika wouldn’t have been if they’d still been inside the ring of candles when the spell had been set off. They’d had to run for it. Dipper had _told_ them to. It’d be fine.

Of course, this _was_ someone who had figured out how to hide their father from Dipper’s omniscience and had summoned Dipper into a trap.

They might have a _sliiiight_ problem.

Belle didn’t realise how _much_ of a problem, though, until the voice said something else in Latin and suddenly she was on fire. It lasted for all of about thirty seconds, but it felt like eternity, red-hot iron jaws closing around her heart and her lungs, burning claws tearing into her stomach and stabbing into her brain. When it finally, finally stopped, there was a faint bluish glow extending a fraction of an inch from each of her limbs and tears tracking down her cheeks. She glanced over at Onika, and saw that she was glowing the same faint blue, a look of absolute horror on her face as she stared down at the floor.

Which was now a few hundred feet below them.

“Did you like the preview?” the same feminine, oddly grating voice that had spoken the Latin asked, and Belle peered down, past the circle, trying to make out the speaker in the dim light. It wasn’t hard; she was standing in the blue-tinged light that Belle had noticed when they’d first arrived, which was coming from the object in her hand that Belle dimly recognized as a MagiCore. As soon as Belle laid eyes on her, it was immediately clear why her voice was so familiar; it was the assistant librarian, Mrs Peterson. Mousy, unassuming, professionally dressed in a drab taupe suit jacket and skirt paired with sensible heels and a bun. The few times Belle had met her, she’d been helpful and friendly and full of facts both useful and interesting, if occasionally a bit weird. Someone who perfectly fit the mental image called to mind by the word ‘librarian’. Someone you expected to shush you at any second.

Someone Belle would never in a million years have suspected of _any_ of this.

“Of course, the _real_ show doesn’t begin until you try to break out of that circle – speaking of which, is it familiar yet? I tweaked the design a bit, naturally, since last time it was used it turned your own power back onto _you_ and everyone involved in designing and testing it died. Gruesomely. And reality got thrown into chaos across the entire state.” She shook her head. “Messy. _I’ve_ made it so your power’s being funneled into the circle itself. You can’t break those bonds any more than you can break your own hold on reality.”

She laughed, a surprisingly normal, pleasant laugh, though with the same strangely grating quality as her speaking voice, and added, “It’s funny, really, that I put all this work into digging up this circle even though it’s so classified it technically doesn’t exist, and modifying it so it might actually _work_ , when all I really needed was the right _incentive_.”

“Dad,” Dipper said, his voice thick with horror, and Belle felt a stab of fear as he added, breathless, “ _Belle_.”

“Oh yes! What’s left of the Gravity Falls chapter of the Cult of the Forgotten One were very forthcoming about your protectiveness of a certain handful of humans. You know, once they stopped screaming.” She sounded surprisingly calm and casual as she said, “All it took was a simple spell. You lay one finger on me, you push one line of that circle, and you father, your sister, and that girl floating around up there die.”

“What is she _talking_ about?” Onika whispered, swimming expertly through thin air over to Belle’s side, clearly benefiting from long hours of practice in the antigravity pool. “Power? Hold on reality? _Cult_? Is _your brother -_ ”

“Shhh!” Belle hissed, holding a finger to her lips. Dipper had straightened up, seemingly with enormous effort, held down by a mesh of glowing blue lines. Why hadn’t he gone all big scary Dreambender yet?

His voice, at least, was as dark and heavy with menacing echo as it ever was. “W̕ha̸t̕ ͟҉d̴id̢ ͞yo͢u̷͜ ͠do ̸w͠i̢͏t͘h̨ m̨͜͢y͡͞ ̕fa̢t̵͢h̸̕͟e̵̡͠r̴̕?͏”

Onika let out a little whimper and went ashen, but Mrs Peterson didn’t even seem fazed. “Lionel? Re _lax_ , he’s fine. So long as you don’t try to escape, that is.” She glanced up, the light from the candles flashing off of the lenses of her glasses so that, for a moment, her eyes seemed to glow. “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting you to bring your sister with you, but she makes a _much_ better hostage, don’t you think? And who’s the hanger-on?”

“A f̡ŕi̧e͠nd͡,” Dipper muttered, forcing Belle to strain downwards trying to hear. It was no good; whatever was holding them up – and she suspected it was the MagiCore that Mrs Peterson was holding so casually in her right hand, there was no _way_ she could have programmed a circle that could hold _Dipper_ with one of those, so there could only be one reason for her needing it – was keeping Belle and Onika a certain height above the ground. No matter how much she pushed or what half-remembered spells she muttered under her breath, Belle couldn’t get any closer.

She could still move herself forward and backward and side to side with a bit of flailing, though. And as she realized that, an idea hit her.

“Swim for the gallery when she’s not looking,” Belle whispered to Onika, who nodded silently. “Try and get over the railing onto the balcony, okay?”

They both started towards the gallery on the right, maybe ten feet from the middle of the vast, dark hall at the centre of the library. With nothing but empty air between them and the balcony railing, nothing to grab onto, no real way of propelling themselves forward, and nothing to catch them if the magic failed or Mrs Peterson decided to turn it off, it seemed like an infinite distance.

“W͟h̵at ̡d͏o̡ y͞o͠u҉ ͝ w̛͡a͘҉͞n͏t̵̛?̶͡” Belle heard Dipper ask from below, and she shut her eyes and hoped silently that Mrs Peterson would get as excited about telling him her entire plan as she did about explaining historical methods of torture or the alignment of the pyramids. Even if she didn’t give anything away, at least she’d be distracted enough to maybe not notice her hostages making for relative safety.

“Why, nothing more than what everyone wants!” Mrs Peterson gave a beatific smile, and set the MagiCore down on the table beside her. “That is to say, unlimited cosmic power.”

“I̵ ̢h̸at͡ȩ to t̨ell͢ you,͢” Dipper said, and Belle, focused though she was on the balcony ahead, could see in her mind’s eye the kind of grin he must be giving Mrs Peterson, the triumphant look with just an edge of something sinister. “But̀ I҉ ҉ca͠n͟’t ͡gi͝ve yo̢ù ̕tḩa̡t.”

“Oh, I know!” Mrs Peterson laughed, mild and amused, and waved a hand over the top of the MagiCore, bringing up a page of cramped cursive writing in glowing blue text on the air in front of her. She flipped a few holographic ‘pages’ before stopping, tracing out a section with one finger and then enlarging it with a grin.

“That’s why I’m going to _take_ it.”

Dipper must have lunged at her, because there was a flare of azure light from the circle below and a horrible tearing pain split Belle’s chest. She cried out, falling back to hang limply in midair with both arms wrapped around herself as the pain slowly faded, hearing the woman’s pleasant but grating laughter rising from below.

“What did I tell you? You fight, they die.” Mrs Peterson picked up a book that Belle hadn’t noticed from the table beside the MagiCore, an ancient-looking tome with the binding torn half off and the pages covered in notes and scribbles and tiny, cramped handwriting that looked awfully similar to the handwriting hovering in midair in front of her. She seemed to check the glowing blue words against something in the text, and nodded to herself, setting the open book down on the table beside her with a puff of dust that she waved away vaguely. “But enough talking. Time to get binding!”

Belle looked away as Mrs Peterson started to read the words hovering in the air before her, as the telltale smell of lightning and tin that meant magic filled the air along with a buzz just on the edge of hearing, and the blue glow from the circle grew stronger and stronger. She gave herself a few final pushes through the air and tumbled over the railing to float just inches from the floor of the balcony beside Onika.

“Whew! Well, so far, so good,” Belle muttered, eyeing the scene before her. It didn’t look good. Dipper’s head hung down between his shoulders, almost as though he were unconscious, and he seemed to have given up struggling against the blue lines that held him down. He still hadn’t changed back to his true form, and for the first time, Belle started to wonder if he even _could_.

“’ _So far, so good’_?” Onika hissed into her ear, and Belle jumped. “We are _stuck_ levitating here _bound_ by a _crazy woman_ who’s trying to do who knows what to your brother who I _think_ might be the vessel of an incredibly powerful _demon_! And if he so much as tries to struggle we _die instantly and painfully!_ _What_ about this is _good_?!”

“Well, we’re not hovering over a hundred-foot drop anymore,” Belle answered, in an undertone. “And I think the spells she’s using to bind _us_ are all preprogrammed on the MagiCore. If she’s trying to bind Dipper somehow she’s gonna need all her focus and all her magic, she can’t afford to have to concentrate on keeping _us_ in the air too.” She leaned down, peering between the bars of the railing and sighting down the MagiCore. “Which means…if we can bust it, we’re free. Do you know any good fire spells?”

“Oh, for – move over.” Onika let out a long sigh, nudging Belle out of the way. “At _this_ distance? A fire spell would destroy half the library. Plus, she’d notice instantly that we were out.”

“Yeah, but then we won’t be bound to the circle and Dipper can escape -”

“Do we _want_ Dipper to escape?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Onika looked like she was going to say something more, but then she shook her head. “All right. I don’t know why, and if I die I am coming back to haunt you, but I’m going to trust you. You don’t want to destroy that thing while you don’t know where your dad is, anyway. Who knows what kind of failsafes she’s got backing it up? If you bust it, you could set off some kind of booby trap and kill us all.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Belle admitted.

“Yeah, but you figured out what was keeping us up here,” Onika said, after a moment. She reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone. “Look, give me five, maybe ten minutes, and I can hack into that thing and turn off all the spells that she’s got running but the one that puts that text in front of her. She won’t notice anything’s wrong, and we can sneak down and…I don’t know, find your dad and get your brother and run.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” Belle said, as Onika bent over her phone’s keypad and started to type furiously, pausing occasionally to tap her lower lip with one finger. She glanced up at Belle with a small smile.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I know I owe you one.” The charge of magic in the air was growing stronger by the second, until it rattled Belle’s back teeth and made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Whatever Mrs Peterson was doing, it was _big_.

“Yeah, well, when we get out of this you’re gonna owe me a _serious_ explanation.”

“I will give it to you. I promise.” Belle looked down over the balcony railing again, and bit her bottom lip. The circle was now almost too bright to look at, and Mrs Peterson’s eyes had started to glow an eerie, solid blue. “Just, could you maybe hurry it up?”

“What? This isn’t a _movie_ , a bunch of drippy text doesn’t just scroll across the screen and then I’m in! These things take finesse. Plus, I’m trying to hack a _MagiCore_ with my _phone_. Cut me some slack!”

“Yeah, but -” Whatever Belle had been about to say was cut short when Dipper’s face turned up towards the ceiling, his eyes snapping open to reveal that same solid blue glow. “Forget the finesse! Just turn it off!”

Onika looked over at Belle, then in the direction Belle was looking, annoyance fading from her face almost instantly as she saw what was going on. “Turning it off it is.”

She tapped a few more keys on the touchpad, and there was a faint whine of something powering down from below. The blue glow dimmed, slightly, and the faint blue aura around both Belle and Onika vanished, both of them falling a few inches to the floor with a loud ‘oof!’.

Mrs Peterson’s chanting, in the sudden, charged silence, faltered, and then continued.

“ _Crap!_ She must be reading it out of the book!” Belle scrambled to her feet. “Well, now she _definitely_ knows we’re free. I’ve gotta get down there and try to stop her before she completes that spell, or else…” She let the sentence trail off, unable to think of a way to get across just how _completely horrible_ that would be.

Onika pulled herself up, too, rubbing her tailbone and wincing. “Which way are the stairs?”

They slipped through the door to the stairwell and instantly felt a difference in the atmosphere. The air still crackled with magic, but it was muted, duller than outside. It was only just enough of a difference to make it obvious just how _much_ magic Mrs Peterson had called up.

Belle took the rough concrete stairs two and three at a time, careening down each flight just a misstep away from crashing out of control and probably breaking her neck. Onika followed more cautiously, until, with a nearly subsonic rumble and a series of deep booms, the entire staircase shook, then started, from the very top, to roll down on itself like a very large, very heavy carpet. Onika shrieked, and ran after Belle, as the roll of shattered concrete and twisted metal started to pick up speed as it hurtled toward them. “No, no, no, I’m too young to die, I haven’t graduated yet, I haven’t kissed anyone without being dared to first, I’ve never been to a karaoke bar, I haven’t been to cosmetology school, I’m too young to _diiiiieeeeeee -_ ”

“Save your breath for running!” Belle called over her shoulder.

She made it to the bottom of the stairwell just steps ahead of Onika and slammed into the door, only to find it wouldn’t budge. She rattled the handle, rammed into it with one shoulder, and finally resorted to beating on it with both fists and shouting, “Come _on_!”

She glanced back over her shoulder, as dust and chips of concrete started to rain down around her, to see the stairs folding in on themselves, hurtling towards the two girls with only a single flight left.

“Here!” Onika stepped up, pushing Belle to the side, and raised both hands. She shouted a few words in a language Belle didn’t know, but knew wasn’t Latin, and the door, frame and all, thumped hard against the concrete surrounding it, kicking up a cloud of dust that made both Belle and Onika cough. Unfortunately, it held.

“Do it again!” Belle shouted, over the almost deafening grinding roar of the falling staircase.

Onika reached out and grabbed her hand. “It needs more! Do you know any destruction spells?”

As Onika called out her spell, Belle joined in with the first destructive spell she could think of. It wasn’t one she knew well, and she definitely hadn’t practiced, but the door still exploded in a cloud of shrapnel and choking concrete dust.

Belle and Onika darted out into the main hall of the library just as the ruins of the staircase crashed down the last few steps and into the wall, turning it into a giant heap of rubble. It settled slowly, with a soft rumble that was quickly drowned out by the buzzing drone of building magical charge, throwing back echoes of Mrs Peterson’s chanting. Her attention was focused completely on the circle, her arms outstretched and her feet inches above the ground, a wind that Belle couldn’t feel whipping her clothes and hair as she intoned each word of Latin, reading aloud from the book that hung suspended before her.

In front of her, in the circle that was now almost too bright to look at, Dipper sat slumped, clearly only still seated upright rather than crumpled in a heap because of whatever magic held him transfixed, with a solid blue glow pouring from his eyes and open mouth.

He wasn’t moving.

Belle started to walk forward before her brain had time to catch up with her feet. When it did, though, she broke into a run.

Something – perhaps the inaudible, unfelt wind – tried to push her away as she approached, but Belle gritted her teeth and plunged forward to tackle Mrs Peterson around the waist and drag her out of the air. Mrs Peterson shouted in surprise and, perhaps, pain as they both fell, cutting off her own chanting.

The wind died. The book dropped to the floor. So, over in the suddenly lightless circle, did Dipper, flopping forward with a soft sigh, the glow vanishing from his eyes and mouth. It faded from Mrs Peterson’s eyes as well as she rolled over to face Belle and pushed herself up on her elbows, her irises and pupils returning as she narrowed her eyes in rage. “You _hit_ me!”

“Yep,” Belle answered, hearing her own heartbeat thunder furiously in her eardrums, balling her right hand into a fist. “And I’m about to do it agai- _augh!_ ”

Mrs Peterson raised a hand, and something invisible but solid slammed into Belle, throwing her back across the library to skid along the floor between the aisles of tables. Belle lay flat on her back for a long moment, struggling desperately to draw in a breath and stop the world from spinning around her head.

“You’re too late,” Mrs Peterson said, her voice echoing in the vast, empty dark of the library, and Belle pushed herself up to see the woman rising to her feet, a manic grin crossing her face as she tossed back her disheveled hair. “The binding was all but complete when _you_ rudely interrupted me.” She held out a hand, and smiled wider when a plume of azure flame rose from it, with an accompanying pulse of blue light from the lines of the circle behind her and a helpless moan from Dipper that stabbed straight to Belle’s heart.

Mrs Peterson gestured with the hand that was still wreathed in painfully familiar blue flame, and Belle was nearly knocked flat again as the library began to spin around the circle and Mrs Peterson, slowly and grindingly at first, then picking up speed, like a carnival ride. “All the Dreambender’s power, mine to command!” she shouted triumphantly, as Belle struggled to get to her feet, tables sliding past as they were slowly but surely driven out towards the walls by centrifugal force. “Anything I can imagine, and all I have to do is wave a hand to make it a reality! Do you have _any_ idea how long I’ve been working for this?”

Belle ducked a table that rolled end over end towards her, and dodged out of the way of another that slid past at a dangerous speed. She didn’t know, and frankly, she didn’t care. Every one of Mrs Peterson’s gestures were accompanied by a flare of light from the circle and another small, keening cry from her brother, and all Belle could see was red.

“And I am _not_ going to lose it because of a couple -” A table flew past, narrowly missing Belle’s head – “of -” The pressure was too great. Belle lost her footing and slipped, skidding backwards across the carpeted floor only to slam into the pile of tables against the far wall – “ _kids!_ ”

Mrs Peterson rose from the ground again, the steady pulse of blue light from the circle behind her growing brighter by the second. Belle tried to stand, but the centrifugal force from the whirling library pinned her against the tables like a butterfly against a corkboard. She wondered what had happened to Onika, what had happened to her father, whether the library would just keep spinning faster and faster until the pressure was too much for her body to take. That’d be an awful way to die.

Belle shut her eyes –

And felt herself rise off of the ground.

Her eyes snapped open again, in astonishment and a little bit of fear, to see Mrs Peterson staring back at her with a look that must mirror her own. Around her, the library kept spinning, but she felt no pressure, no force, just the perfect calm of the eye of the hurricane.

She looked down, and saw a fine bluish aura covering her.

Hope rose in Belle’s chest and nearly blocked her throat as she looked around the room, finally finding Onika, also hovering, also glowing, over by where the shattered ruins of the door had been before the room started spinning. She held up her phone, grinning ear to ear, and called out, “I only turned on the levitation spell!”

“Finesse!” Belle shouted back, and then added, “If you were closer I would high-five you _so hard -_ ”

“How’s _this_ for a high-five?”

The same invisible force smacked Belle to the ground, but she popped back up again almost instantly, a little rattled and definitely angry. “You call _that_ a villainous pun?” she shouted at Mrs Peterson, whose eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I am _not_ getting beaten by somebody who thinks that _that_ is an acceptable villainous pun!”

She dove forward through the air, only to be thrown back again as soon as Mrs Peterson raised a hand, pulled up short by the feeling of an invisible hand at her throat. Belle reached up to her throat, trying to struggle out of the woman’s clutches, glancing over to see Onika frantically tapping away at the keyboard on her phone. The library had spun into a blur around them, dim colours streaking past at deadly speeds. If Mrs Peterson threw her now, Belle might be ripped to bits before the levitation spell could pick her back up off the floor.

“ _Wow_ , you’re persistent!” Mrs Peterson exclaimed, giving Belle a long, calculating look. “Most people would have given up when they realized their opponent literally controls reality. I could turn you into something _veeeerrry_ unpleasant, you know. Or just turn you inside out! How’d you like to see your own nervous system?”

One of the lenses of her glasses was cracked, and there was a mad glint in her eyes that made Belle struggle harder. There had to be _something_ she could do -

Mrs Peterson clenched her outstretched hand into a fist, abruptly cutting off Belle’s air. Belle choked, gasped, kicked out helplessly at thin air. Through the swimming darkness that started to threaten the edges of her vision, Belle saw the circle flare a few times, heard Onika shriek as she was thrown to the floor just inside the spinning ring, saw her frantically scrabbling for something to hold onto to avoid being sucked out into the whirling library. Mrs Peterson’s laughter rose over the scene, still unfairly pleasant, not the wicked cackle of a villain triumphant but more like someone having a hearty laugh over a well-told joke, and Belle wished, as the dark closed over her, that the last thing she heard would be anything but this.

“Wilhelmina!”

Like, for example, her father’s voice.

Mrs Peterson’s concentration slipped at the shout, letting Belle draw in a huge gasp of air, scanning the room for her father before her head had even stopped swimming. It sounded like he was calling from one of the galleries above, and when Belle looked up, she realised that only the lower few floors were spinning. The top galleries were still perfectly still, and it was from one of those that her father’s voice was shouting.

“So help me, if you’ve harmed a _single hair_ on either of my children’s heads -”

Mrs Peterson waved a hand, there was a flare of blue flame from her hand and an answering spark of blue light from the dark galleries overhead, and Belle’s father’s voice cut off abruptly. She turned back to Belle, shaking her head. “Sorry for the interruption. Now. Was I going to turn you inside out, or was I going to separate you out into your component atoms?”

Belle took a deep breath, pushing all her worry and her fear for her family and her friend, all of her fury over what the woman had done to Dipper, into focus, and yelled the spell she’d been working on developing for the past few weeks.

“Manducare splendeat!”

There was a puff of smoke, and Mrs Peterson looked down at her hands, which shimmered and glinted as brightly as every inch of her now did. She looked up at Belle, through glasses now encrusted with sparkles, and arched one eyebrow. “What was this supposed to -”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence before the glitter spell, already strained by a combination of poor Latin, imperfect design, and overenthusiastic casting, finally failed.

The explosion was spectacular, probably the biggest Belle had managed yet. She flung up an arm to shield her face as bits of gore and glitter pattered softly down around her, dropping to the ground as the spinning library slowly ground to a halt and the light from the circle died.

“Is everybody okay?” Belle called out, into the sudden hush. Across the room, Onika moaned, rolling over to stare at the ceiling.

“I’m alive. And I’m going to need _so_ much therapy.”

“Dipper?” Belle called out, a little more softly, getting unsteadily to her feet and looking around. The library was a mess, tables thrown against the walls, books scattered on top of the heaps of furniture and fallen bookcases, the rubble from the destroyed staircase mixed in, giving the whole place an apocalyptic feel. The circle in the middle of the hall looked burnt, and the figure crumpled in its centre, looking smaller than Belle could ever remember, wasn’t moving.

She jumped up and ran over, ignoring the way her knees wobbled and threatened to give way underneath her. “Rub out all those symbols, break up the lines, anything you can do to destroy this thing, do it!” Belle commanded as Onika joined her, stumbling forward herself to kneel down beside her brother. “Dipper? Dipdop? Come on, bro, are you in there?”

For one awful, precipitous moment, Dipper didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe. Then he coughed, weakly, and Belle let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, flinging herself down on top of him in a hug and driving an ‘oof’ out of him. “ _Ow_ , Belle, you’re _heavy_.”

“You’re alive!”

“I’m alive.” Dipper sat up, with some effort, giving Belle a wan smile. One of his eyes flickered as he looked at her, going fragmented and almost pixellated before turning back to normal, albeit black and gold. “Thanks for the save, by the way. I would _never_ have thought of blowing somebody up with glitter.”

Belle shrugged. “Bro-bro, you’re glitching.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, I’m just worn out.” Dipper stretched, wings flickering into visibility behind him and then out again, cracking his neck as golden brickwork shimmered over his skin and vanished again. “That – _woman_ – took a lot out of me with that spell. Literally, she used me like a tank full of magic and that spell was the tap. And she left it running.”

“You can pop out to the mindscape and recharge if that’s what you need, I’ll tell Dad -” Belle started, and then clapped a hand to her mouth with realization. “Dad! He’s up on one of the top galleries, she did something to him -”

“I’m all right,” their father said, hurrying out from the stairwell across the room from the one that had been destroyed. “She just zipped my mouth shut, she didn’t stop me moving – where’d she go?”

“We took care of it,” Belle said, quickly.

“ _Belle_ took care of it,” Dipper corrected her, sounding entirely too proud as he leaned heavily on her shoulder. “Speaking…of which…you’re going to need a new assistant librarian.”

The look that crossed their father’s face was incredulous and filled with just a little bit of surprised pride. “ _Belle_ took care of -”

“ _Yes_ ,” Belle said, shortly.

Their father looked like he might have pushed for the full story, but stopped when Onika straightened up from rubbing out the circle. “And who’s this?”

Onika put on her best smile, brushing a lock of hair out of her face and standing up. “Hi, I’m Onika, I’m -” She shot a glance over at Belle, and Belle took over.

“She’s a friend.”

“Onika?” The twins’ father raised an eyebrow at Belle. “I seem to recall your name being mentioned in combination with a party tonight that my daughter wasn’t supposed to be attending.”

“I snuck out,” Belle muttered, towards her sneakers.

“Just for the record, I did _not_ help her,” Dipper added, sounding worried, and Belle couldn’t help a snort of laughter.

“Nobody’s gonna try to take the remote away from you, you dork.” It wasn’t all that funny, but she couldn’t stop laughing. Here they were, sitting in the middle of a nearly destroyed library, in bits of bloody glitter that had been a _person_ a couple of seconds ago, and oh god, _she’d_ done that, she’d _blown somebody up_ , she was going to puke –

Belle wasn’t sure when her laughter had turned into sobbing, but there were warm arms around her and someone whispering soothing shushes in her ear and she let herself go, gasping great silent dry sobs into a sympathetic shoulder.

…

They ended up driving Onika home. On the way, they managed, between the three of them, to give Onika a reasonably decent explanation of what had just happened and what the deal with their family was.

“So your brother…is Alcor the Dreambender,” Onika said, looking across the backseat and around Belle at Dipper, who was leaning against Belle’s shoulder with his eyes shut and his mouth open, drooling gold on her sweatshirt. It had turned out that part of the binding Mrs Peterson had put on him, the part that kept him in human form and unable to use a good chunk of his powers (which, Dipper had made a point of telling everyone, wouldn’t have worked in the first place if he hadn’t been spending so much time in human form _anyway_ , it took a lot of energy, no no no he _wasn’t_ trying to blame anybody he just didn’t want them to think that he couldn’t deal with _one little spell!_ ) was still active, and he was too zapped from her borrowing his powers to break it just yet. Currently, he was _not_ asleep, just resting, gathering his strength so he could break the binding sooner, and _he could hear just fine with his eyes closed, Belle, stop telling Onika about the time he’d got stuck as a one-eyed star for an entire afternoon, that was barely even relevant_.

“You’re taking this remarkably calmly,” Belle said, and Onika laughed.

“I just got dragged along on a summons out of my own party, used as a hostage to help a homicidal _whackjob_ try to steal a demon’s powers, and nearly got killed helping a girl I barely know free the demon and _explode_ the whackjob. Finding out the guy I’ve been crushing on is the _Dreambender_ in disguise? That’s -” She went quiet. “Actually, no. That’s still freaky and a little bit terrifying and mortifyingly embarrassing. I just don’t have any more terror or freaked-out left to spare for it right now. I’ll probably have a good long scream about it, like, in the middle of the night sometime. Right now I’m too tired and burnt out to care.”

She leaned over and rested her head on Belle’s shoulder, leaving Belle with someone’s head on each of her shoulders and a not entirely unpleasant feeling that she’d just been deputized as a pillow.

“You won’t tell anybody, right?” Belle asked, and Onika laughed again, sleepily.

“Are you kidding? Who would even believe me?” She nudged Belle’s knee with her own. “Besides, I wouldn’t do that. You’re my friend.”

“Yeah,” Belle agreed, feeling a sudden wave of warmth that had nothing and everything to do with the warm weight of the two people leaning on her. “Yeah, I am. And you’re mine.”

When they stopped to drop Onika off at her house, she paused before getting out of the car. “You know,” she said, turning to look Belle in the eye, “if your dad doesn’t want you going out to big parties, then we should have a sleepover sometime. You and me, pizza, karaoke, makeovers, the works.”

“I would _love_ to!” Belle squealed, throwing herself forward to pull Onika into a hug. Dipper let out a groan as his pillow pulled away, dropping him to the car seat.

“Great! Then give me a call when you get un-grounded, okay?” Onika pulled out her phone, pulling up a holographic image of a string of numbers and sliding them over to the phone Belle took out of her own pocket. They settled into place in the list of Belle’s contacts, a smiling photo of Onika popping up beside them, and Belle grinned.

“You got it.”

…

“Heyo, bro-bro, chicken noodle soup!”

Dipper looked up from the couch where he was curled up under a blanket, watching some mindless reality show – oooh, was that Baby Survival Island? “Belle, I’m not actually sick, I don’t need chicken noodle soup.”

“Pssshhh. Of course you do.” Belle sat down on the couch, careful to make sure she didn’t sit on her brother’s knees, and held out one of the bowls of soup she’d made. Of course, it had come out of a can, but she’d heated it up on the stove herself and that was what _really_ counted, wasn’t it? “Here, eat up, it’ll get you back on your feet and into the mindscape in no time. What’re you watching?” On the television screen, an infant in a palm-leaf diaper picked up a sharp stick, dropped it, and started to cry.

“Huh? Oh, I wasn’t paying attention.” Dipper squinted at the TV set, one of his eyes glitching out, and then said, “Timmy the Terrible’s been sent out to hunt for the tribe. He’s gonna get voted off tonight because his fine motor skills are still too underdeveloped to hold that stick.”

“Whoever decided to throw a bunch of infants on a tropical island and film them was a genius,” Belle said, as her brother took the bowl of soup she held out. “It’s so pointless, but I can’t look away.”

“Literally pointless, in Timmy the Terrible’s case,” Dipper agreed, and they both laughed.

There was silence for a few seconds, as they both slurped down several spoonfuls of soup and Timmy the Terrible crawled off to hit some coconuts with his soft baby hands. Then Dipper asked, carefully, “How are you holding up?”

“Huh?”

“You killed somebody last night.” Dipper pulled down the blanket enough so that Belle could see his whole face, shuffling up to sit with his back against the armrest and letting her sit back more comfortably. “Another human being. It’s okay to be…well, not okay.”

Belle shrugged, staring into her bowl of soup. Suddenly, it didn’t seem very appetizing anymore. “I dunno. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to sooner or later.”

“I know. I just -” Belle let out an angry sigh, setting her soup bowl down on the side table and pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I don’t want to,” she admitted, mumbling into her knees. “I don’t wanna think about it. I don’t want it to have happened.”

Dipper hesitated, then leaned forward, reaching out a hand to rub her back. “Hey, it’s all right, it’s okay to feel guilty -”

“But I don’t!” Belle let go of her knees, spreading her arms wide as she tried to explain. “I know I _should_ feel bad, because it was just so _easy_ and she never saw it coming and one second she was there and then she just _wasn’t_ , but I don’t feel bad about doing it! I _had_ to! She _hurt_ you! She was going to kill us all! I’d do it _all over again_ and -” She choked, and shook her head, reaching up to rub her eyes with one hand. “That _scares_ me, okay? That I can do something like _that_ , and not feel guilty about it. So I don’t wanna think about it.”

Dipper paused, for a moment, and then started to rub her back again, slow, careful circles. “You may not believe me…but I get it,” he said, after a moment.

“Oh.” Belle stopped, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, and had to laugh. “Yeah, I guess you do, huh? Wow, now I feel silly.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Dipper said, and took a long, deliberate slurp of his soup. Belle giggled, and then grabbed her bowl, doing her best to slurp louder and more ridiculously. They went back and forth until all the soup was gone and they were both trying desperately to hold back laughter and not spray soup everywhere.

On the screen, Timmy the Terrible was voted off the island. He did not look devastated by his loss. In fact, he had the singular delighted expression of a baby whose diaper was going to need to be changed _really quickly_.

“Well, this is over,” Dipper said, reaching behind him onto the side table for the remote. He glanced back at Belle, his eyes flickering briefly, before he asked, with a sigh that only sounded a little bit defeated, “Do you wanna watch, I don’t know, Pony Magic Academy or something?”

Belle gave her brother a small smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> The ‘spell’ that Belle invents is Google Translate Latin for ‘eat glitter!’


End file.
